Angus Deaton on inequality: ‘The war on poverty has become a war on the poor’

The Nobel prize winner and author of new book Economics in America argues economists must get back to serving society

When Angus Deaton arrived in the US four decades ago, he imagined he had something to say about economic inequality and how to tackle it that Americans might want to hear. Instead, the great economic minds of the time told him to shut up.

The Scottish-born winner of the 2015 Nobel prize for economics struggled at first to understand why there was so little interest in a subject most European economists regarded as a central concern of post-war policies to reduce poverty and build more equitable societies.